


Nothing Like the Sun

by lafiametta



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: 1x07, But also the most awkward sir tbh, F/M, Goodsir is the best sir, Missing Scene, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-20 05:28:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14888505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lafiametta/pseuds/lafiametta
Summary: Harry wakes in his tent, only to realize that he is not alone.





	Nothing Like the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> I was blown away by alessiapelonzi’s gorgeous [Goodsir/Lady Silence art](http://alessiapelonzi.tumblr.com/post/174437769040) – who wouldn’t be, honestly? – and got inspired to write a little missing scene from Episode 7… Enjoy! 
> 
> And feel free to come talk to me on Tumblr (@lafiametta) about Assistant Surgeon on the HMS _Erebus_ Harry D. S. Goodsir - or anything else Terror-related!

Harry is at first puzzled when he wakes, for while the hour has clearly grown late, the soft halo of lamp light still illuminates the tent’s canvas walls. He must have left the lantern burning, he realizes, fallen right asleep before he had a mind to put it out.

But it is not solely the light that is responsible for his confusion, as there is also the matter of the position of his body on the pallet. For he had somehow shifted in his sleep, turning over from his right side onto his left, an ostensibly blameless act, and yet now he finds himself lying face to face with a woman – an unattached, unmarried woman – and one who is evidently just as awake as he is.

Silence is still, unreadable as a sphinx, her eyes a pair of dark and fathomless globes.

It will not do. He must convince her at once to return to her own tent, or at the very least make his excuses and retreat to a further corner of his own. He must think of her reputation, for what should happen if it were put out among the men that she had come into his tent at night, even if her purpose was entirely innocent? Harry knows that many of them already think her a savage or even a conjurer. It is pure rot and foolishness, born out of ignorance; still, he would not have them imagine her the surgeon’s doxy as well.

Despite the impropriety, however, he cannot yet bring himself to move. Lying next to her underneath the wool blanket, he is warm and snugly comfortable, more so than he’s been in months, perhaps even years. All points of reason tell him that he should be more shocked by her presence, by the manner in which she came into his tent, by the familiarities she took in laying down beside him. (Her hand is still there, clasped along his shoulder, steady as an anchor and warmer besides.) But there is no outrage in his heart, no recrimination. There is only gratitude.

His mind had been in such disorder following the events of the night, his thoughts overrun by a terrible plague of images from which he could find no escape: Dr. Stanley staggering towards them, engulfed in flames; the small and lifeless body of Jacko as it lay folded inside his wooden trunk; poor Morfin’s blood staining dark against the shale. It was all he could do to stumble back to his tent before any of the men saw him in such a wretched state, unable to speak from weeping and trembling. Part of him is still ashamed she had to see him that way at all, as helpless as a child terrified of the dark. Even now, he feels as if he must explain himself, or else apologize for being so uncharacteristically out of sorts.

“I –” he begins, and the words fail him, as he knew they would, for it is clear that he can no more make sense of himself in English than he can in Inuktitut. And so he settles on something that he thinks will lose little in the translation. “ _Qujannamiik_ ,” he says softly. _Thank you_.

Her lips curl upward into a tiny smile – a rare gift indeed, precious for all that they were so infrequently bestowed – and she momentarily glances away, almost bashfully, before returning to meet his gaze once more.

She slowly lifts her hand from off his shoulder, a sign, no doubt, that she intends to take her leave of him and then depart. But rather than turning to go, she does something entirely unexpected. Reaching up, she curls her fingers through the thick of his hair, just above his ear, the base of her palm smooth and warm against his temple. His body stills from the shock of it – and from the pleasure, too, for it is an intimate gesture, and he has been starved of tenderness for such a long time.

Her hand traces down along the side of his face, nestling in the untamed riot of his whiskers, her thumb coming to rest on the edge of his wind-chapped cheekbone. Harry closes his eyes, for some part of him cannot bear to have her touch him in this way, not when all they’ve brought to her is misery, while still another part of him is certain he will perish should she ever choose to remove her hand from where it sits upon his cheek. More than anything, he is overcome, by what sentiments he cannot entirely be sure, and yet it is clear that something has shifted between the two of them, irrevocably so.

He opens his eyes to the light once more, seeing her anew, his mind thinking only to memorize how the shadows are falling upon the planes of her face, the way the blades of her brows arch and narrow into graceful points.

_Dear Lord, she is lovely_ , he thinks, _serene as a Diana cut from marble_.

In the months of their acquaintance, she has been so many things to him: at first a teacher and a pupil, and then a companion, and perhaps even a friend. The time they had spent together on _Erebus_ was some of the happiest he had known on the voyage, the hours in between their meetings often counted down in keen anticipation. For it was not only the joint project of the dictionary that brought him such joy, but the diversion of her company. She was curious and bright, easily making sense of some of the more abstract vocabulary he had proffered, and was possessed of a sharp humor that often required little in the way of translation.

Sometimes Harry wonders if in fact he owes her some portion of his sanity. His symptoms, compared to others of the crew, are not so markedly acute, and her presence – during the cruelest part of an already harsh winter – had allowed him a full month’s reprieve from the darkness that seemed to overtake the spirits of so many of the men.

But gratitude alone cannot account for the way his heart is now beating, so thick and ponderous, how his breath is gathering impatiently in his throat, all his senses aflame with the immediate and profound realization of how little distance separates them on the pallet.

Compelled by nothing resembling rational thought, he leans forward, and with a tilt of his head, gently presses his lips to hers, finding them full and pliant, if only a trifle cool. For a moment, he is lost, awash in heady and unfamiliar sensation, only to be sharply torn from his reverie by the sudden awareness of what he has just done. _What kind of man was he, to take advantage of her in such a base, impulsive fashion? And what must she think of him now?_ He pulls back from her, his cheeks hot with shame, wanting at once to stammer out an apology – yet again – but before he can, her hand tightens just so upon his cheek, keeping him from retreating any further, and she moves closer to brush her lips against his.

It is not a kiss of passion, but neither is it entirely chaste, for there is a yearning in it that cannot easily be classified. There is a strange melancholy to it, too – a sense of endings wrapped within beginnings, of things both lost and simultaneously found. And then it is over, and she turns her face upward to place a single kiss upon his brow, soft as a benediction.

Harry watches as she relaxes back down upon the pallet, curling herself slightly inwards as if she means to stay and sleep beside him for a time. He knows now that he will never ask her to leave – if he had ever a mind to heed the dictates of propriety, he possesses it no longer – nor can he truly bear the thought of being anywhere else but here, right next to her, with the weight of her fingertips like a gentle brand upon his skin. Her eyes flutter with momentary drowsiness and he finds himself wishing he could devise some system of notation that might keep her, just as she is, within the gleaming halls of his memory.

_Had he but time_ , Harry thinks, _he would write a dictionary dedicated solely to her, giving definition to each gesture and expression, artfully translating the span of her neck and the color of her eyes into every language he knew_.

He feels as if he must say something to her before she sleeps, before morning comes and with it a return to the strictures that govern the waking hours – if not a declaration (which he is fairly unsure he would know how to make, having had so little practice), then something that might convey at least a fraction of what he feels, lodged deep inside his breast. And yet his mind resembles nothing more than a blank and unforgiving page, the ideal words elusive, unwilling to be found in her language or in his own. He fears all is lost, until he recalls a slim volume of sonnets given to him at Christmas many years ago and brought with him to Edinburgh, where it had often served as a pleasant distraction when his anatomy studies grew too long and tedious. He had several favorites that he would on occasion read aloud to himself, in the privacy of his rooms, finding delight within the verses even as he had wondered if he would ever fully understand the sentiments that inspired them.

Underneath the blanket, his hand blindly searches for hers, at last finding it and encircling it against his wool-covered palm.

“ _My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun_ ,” he begins to recite, the lines coming back to him on an unwinding spool of memory. He speaks quietly, barely more than a whisper, as if they two are all that is left of the world, the universe consisting of nothing but the warm, enclosed parentheses of their recumbent forms.

“ _Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;_  
_If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;_ _  
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head_.”

The language, while rich and sonorous, is a touch old-fashioned, enough that she may understand only a partial measure of what he is saying. But perhaps that is why he chose it, for his heart is suddenly feeling shy and hesitant, in need of something to cloak the full expression of his sentiments.

“ _I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,_  
_But no such roses see I in her cheeks;_  
_And in some perfumes is there more delight_ _  
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks_.”

Her eyes have fallen closed, dark lashes fanning down towards her cheeks – and yet he senses she has not yet fully succumbed to sleep. Regardless, he continues on, desirous to reach the final lines.

“ _I love to hear her speak, yet well I know_  
_That music hath a far more pleasing sound;_  
_I grant I never saw a goddess go;_  
_My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:_  
_And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare_ _  
As any she belied with false compare_.”

Perhaps she is sleeping now, for her breath has turned deep and even, her features freed of the guardedness that so often marks her expression. There is little indication that she heard the last few words he spoke, even less that she understood any part of his intention in uttering them. Yet it is enough for him: enough to know that such things were ever said, enough to know that she bore him some affection, enough to have shared this momentary respite with her, a becalmed island in a sea of desperation and fear. And if he is not to survive this voyage – a prospect he occasionally allows himself to consider – it will be enough to imagine her thinking of him from time to time, kept forever within the stores of her memory.

Harry gives her hand a tiny, gentle press – he has no greater wish to disturb – and then turns his head to settle against the pallet, allowing himself one last glimpse of her before he shuts his eyes and silently follows her into the soft oblivion of sleep.


End file.
